In the frame

When Dennis Morris told his school careers officer he wanted to be a photographer, the idea was dismissed out of hand. "Black people can't earn a living from jobs like that," he was told. The only opportunity open to him, it seemed, was to follow in his stepfather's footsteps and work on the production line at the Ford factory in Dagenham. Morris declined the offer and went on to prove the advice wrong in spectacular style.

He would become a celebrated chronicler of musicians, including Bob Marley, the Sex Pistols, Oasis, the Prodigy, Supergrass and Radiohead.

And his documentary pictures of everyday London life would be made into glossy books and shown in swanky galleries.

Next week, three of his major collections will form the basis of his illustrated talk, London Through a Lens, spanning more than 30 years of social change in one of the world's great cities. Southall: Home From Home is a study of a major centre of British Asian life. Growing Up Black reflects his upbringing among the Caribbean community in and around Hackney, east London. This Happy Breed, on show at the Inside Space Gallery, just off Oxford Street in London, is perhaps the most surprising. Why?

Partly because he was so young when he captured pictures in the 1970s of such quality and partly because the subjects are exclusively white. "It was the time," says Morris, now in his 40s, "just before everything was changed."

Viewed from 2003, these images seem to belong to another London, another country. Here are Cockney pearly kings, blind pub pianists and elderly ladies dancing bosom to bosom at a Darby and Joan Club. Here are horse traders with knobbly sticks and fingers covered in enormous rings - in Southall of all places. "I think they were the last white guys trading there," says Morris with a grin. "It was the only market of its kind in London and it's long gone now."

Long gone, too, is the so-called "shotgun wedding". Morris was still a child when he was dragooned by his mother into doing some wedding pictures for their insurance agent who, in turn, had forced his daughter to marry the man whose child she was all too evidently carrying under that dress of pink satin. The budding photographer captured bride and groom cutting a miserly cake with the bride's parents. All look as miserable as sin. This Happy Breed, indeed.

The title is affectionate as well as ironic. Morris has suffered his fair share of racism - from landlords, teachers, skinheads, the police and careers officers - yet he is able to say: "I've always been fascinated by English eccentricity. And I suppose I had a certain respect for the old-timers who'd been through two world wars but retained that 'Knees-up-Mother-Brown spirit'."

He frankly admits that his life was kept on track by two institutions: the Church of England and the Cholmeley youth club (founded 1898) where a demolition squad is now hard at work. "This was where I learned about photography," he says, sadly. "For other kids it might have been carpentry or mechanics. Youth clubs have all but closed down now, and they wonder why so many kids are hanging out on the streets."

Crucial, too, was the input of three "guiding lights", as he calls them. Every Sunday, the Rev Donald Pateman managed to pack to the rafters the biggest parish church in London - St Mark's, Dalston, otherwise known as the Cathedral of the East End. "A wonderful man," says Morris who, like all the other St Mark's choirboys at the time, was dressed up in an Eton suit. "After the service, he used to give us lessons in croquet out there on the vicarage lawn," he says. "No kidding".

He first met Marley, another of his guiding lights, at a club called the Speakeasy in 1975. "He was asking me what it was like for young black kids in this country. Then he asked if I wanted to go on tour with the band. I was in my last year at school, and I just disappeared for three or four weeks. Marley was so positive and solid. He came with a message and a purpose, and he gave me black pride for the first time.

Donald Patterson, to give him his full name, was a millionaire philanthropist who bought property in the East End and rented it back to black families at a reasonable rent. Until he was 11, Morris had slept behind a curtain in the same room (indeed, the same bed) as his mother. "She worked in one of the sweatshops that are now providing such spacious loft apartments for City types," he says. "We'd come from Jamaica when I was five and it was very difficult then for our people to find accommodation. I remember those signs saying: 'No blacks, no Irish, no dogs.' Without Mr Patterson, I'd never have got where I did."

Patterson had made his money from photographic products. "Dennis, you have the eye, the golden eye," he would tell Morris. He loaned the teenager Leica and Rolliflex cameras and showered him with inspirational photographic magazines and books. Unlike the school careers officer, he was prepared to back someone young, gifted and black who had the skill to capture a society on the cusp of change. Jobs for life at Ford? They went the way of pearly kings, pub piano players and shotgun weddings.

· Dennis Morris's illustrated talk, London Through a Lens, is at the London Transport Museum next Tuesday at 6.30pm. This Happy Breed is at the Inside Space Gallery, Great Titchfield Street, London W1, until June 19.

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